Doing genealogical research is exciting and invigorating. We can make great strides through our own efforts of tracing ancestral connections to the past as well as discovering living cousins as descendants of many of our ancestors.

Discovering living cousins and descendants can be challenging because record information is simply not as available as it is for the deceased. Name changes for women descendants can be difficult as name changes occur as a result of a marriage.

Depending how intense you are on trying to find a living relative, you may just keep trying to find these elusive descendants with online phone books, records, FaceBook or whatever means you can think of to uncover these cousins no matter how distantly related to you they are. They may have nuggets of information that can potentially expand your research by quantum leaps.

Are there other alternatives to finding these cousins when all of your efforts have been unsuccessful?

Let me relate to you a personal anecdotal case from a recent call I received.

A person discussed with me that they had tried every means to find a living descendant. They tried more of my suggestions but were still not able. They did have some information on the person they were seeking but could just not make the connection.

I offered one final suggestion to them.

Perhaps they should contact a “private eye” or a “detective agency” to help them discover records of how a relative could be discovered and perhaps contacted via records that are only available to these kind of agencies.

To make a long story short, the person took my advice, contacted a local investigative agency (A+ rated by the Better Business Bureau) and was provided with some contact information for this long-lost relative within 3 HOURS!

This was a happy story as I was told.

Do not expect results like this to occur all of the time. Also be prepared that the person you seek may not be happy at all to have been discovered.

I do not know what the cost incurred was by the person seeking the relative. They were very, very happy in working with the investigative agency. The results they received in just obtaining some contact information were fantastic. The final part of the story was the happy result for both the researcher and the long-lost relative!

So miracles do happen and do happen quickly once you make the commitment of some time and money to work with a professional agency for investigations.

You may want to keep this trick in your back pocket, but you should not expect you will get the same results as was related to me from a general inquiry call I received.

If you are desperate to find that elusive living relative then you may want to consider this really different form of research to take!